In the last line of Angry Black White Boy, it says that Macon joins his ancestors. It never explains who these ancestors are, but there are a few explanations which make sense.
The first of these explanations is that the ancestors are referring to Macon's parents, grandparents, and Cap Ansen. The line would be saying that Macon is joining those before him who either actively participated in racism or ignored it. Macon views all of these people as really bad because even though they may recognize the problem, they don't do anything to fix it. Instead, they just go on with their lives accepting their white privilege and staying happy by remaining ignorant. At the end of the book Macon also wants to return to this state of mind. This interpretation would also make sense as Macon writes "cap" on the bus which shows how he thinks he is getting closer to both Cap Ansen and the Cap that was hated by every member of the graffiti community. Even though he was involved in graffiti culture, comparing himself to one of the most hated just shows how much Macon is struggling with himself right now.
Another interpretation is that the ancestors are referring to the other people like Macon, white people who found the problem of race in America disturbing and wanted to change it. Macon is sort of unique in his approach because he educates himself through hip-hop and takes a very militant viewpoint, but others have come before him. If we take ancestors to mean this, then when Macon fails he is being compared to all of the other whites who sympathized with the cause who also failed. There have been white people who supported the cause and were fairly successful, like the Jewish man in the book, but no one like Macon, who wants to change how white people evaluate racism in America, has ever really gotten anywhere.
Macon's death makes us question why he is being killed. Is it because he is not identifying with his white ancestors, or is it because he is identifying with those who have tried to change the mindset of white people before him and failed.
I read the last line to mean that no matter how hard he tries to renounce his whiteness, it's in his DNA. I think that he realizes that his attempts were futile after writing "cap" on the bus, as he is associating himself with his racist ancestor as well as a man who destroyed art made by the black community and was hated by them.
ReplyDeleteThe ending is definitely the most confusing part of the book. "Macon joined his ancestors". It's open to so many interpretations, but personally I think that Macon died, just because Burleigh pulls the trigger on the gun. However, who knows, maybe saying that Burleigh pulled the trigger is another analogy to something else.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to think about why Macon was killed; what makes someone like Burleigh feel so much hatred towards Macon that he would go so far as to kill him. I also thought how Macon died was a little weird. The whole scenario of him walking into a store and then getting beaten up and eventually killed is pretty unlikely, and then the fact that it was a test makes it all seem really dumb, and it wasn't a very well-organized test because one of the actors happens to be an extreme racist which somehow went unnoticed by Conway and Nique. I was a little shocked that Macon could get shot by someone so racist in the 90s, but I guess a big part of Macon's argument that is valid was that racism didn't get solved in the 1960s. Anyways, the details surrounding Macon's death are confusing but provide an intriguing ending to the story.
ReplyDeleteWhen I read the ending, I interpreted it as the first explanation, that Macon had finally done what he had been trying to do that whole last section, which was become white. Thus, joining his ancestors was him joining Cap and all of the other either racist or not caring white people who he had tried to imitate leading up to his death.
ReplyDeleteI never thought of the last line as possibly being hopeful, as it is in one of your interpretations. The fact that Macon attempted to abandon his whiteness and kill his eventual murderer before his death might indicate a return to his ideology. Joining the civil rights activists that came before him is far less bleak than the alternative.
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